


Necessary

by sunshinemellow



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 10:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24469405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinemellow/pseuds/sunshinemellow
Summary: Kakashi nearly makes a sacrifice that Sakura is unwilling to forgive."To be quite honest he had fully expected to die, and he was halfway caught between reveling in the familiar intensity of what it feels like to live after one has expected to die, and the terror of all the things he had thought would die with him suddenly surging forth to his lips."
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 75





	Necessary

When she spins around to look at him, he can nearly hear the fury crack in the air. Her eyes are molten and filled with anger and frantic with something else he can’t quite name.

As she stalks toward him, he simply stands still. He is surprised at the complete and utter lack of any survival instinct that would tell him to tense or to brace for impact. Instead he just finds himself watching her as she draws closer. He feels a certain sense of hollowness or futility. There is something harsh and beautiful in the grace of her stalk, in the white heat of her rage.

“How could you do that,” she bites out, eyes raking across his in disbelief. “How could you?”

He just stares.

Finally she is in front of him, her fists clenched like white steel and he almost craves the feeling of one breaking his insides open. He just wants to crumble, wants to be undone into something new.

She swings a hand forward, and he watches it a strange mixture of apprehension and desire. But at the last second it stops nearly an inch from his chest, pausing right above the surface of his body where she could have made a crater.

She breathes heavily with sharp ragged gasps, eyes staring up into his in accusation. Again, he finds himself incapable of moving or trying to defend himself. He just feels so deeply the desire to be broken apart or cracked open. Especially by her.

Her fingers drift out of the fist until they are splayed out. Her eyes remained locked on his as her hand closes the remaining inch to his chest, where it rests on the blood-soaked front of his vest. He can feel her chakra swirling beneath the thin barrier of her skin. It is hot, chaotic, and angry.

“How could you,” she whispers harshly.

Suddenly he feels the white heat of her chakra melting into him, righteous and searing as it angrily seeks out hurts to set right. It finds the bloody cavity at the bottom left of his chest, where the shuriken was lodged mere inches from his heart. The metal had found its way slightly left of any type of fatal injury and was buried in an inconvenient cage of flesh and bone, but not in a space that would have killed him.

Not in the space he had expected it to go when he had leapt in front of her.

To be quite honest he had fully expected to die, and he was halfway caught between reveling in the familiar intensity of what it feels like to live after one has expected to die, and the terror of all the things he had thought would die with him suddenly surging forth to his lips, desperately wishing to be voiced.

He stares down at her and the incredible brilliance of her green eyes and thinks again that it would have absolutely been worth dying for this.

“Can’t you speak,” she demands again, staring at him.

His throat goes dry as he feels the skin in his chest knitting back together.

“I couldn’t let you die,” he finally manages, which seems to hold enough partial truth in it to be a satisfactory answer.

Her eyes blaze. “I was perfectly capable of blocking it.”

They both know that she is probably right, but could have been wrong. Her arms are coated with gore and debris. She had spent the fight crushing boulders and rib cages and had quite frankly taken the brunt of the work given that all the enemy nin had made the seriously flawed assumption that her gender would make her easier to kill. The stray shuriken was an anomaly and seemed to be coming in at her blind spot, but the rush of primal fear he had felt when he imagined her not sensing it had been too potent to ignore.

“I just couldn’t,” he repeats, staring down at her. He can’t tell her how integral she is to him, or how attached he has become. He fears it will disgust her.

“On these missions you cannot attempt stupid and willful self-sacrifice,” she hisses, gesturing at their ANBU masks that were hastily set aside to heal damage done to their skulls from being knocked around by an earlier explosion. “I am _qualified_ for this and it is not my first time out here.”

He nods, numbly accepting and knowing this to be true. She had gone on plenty of missions like this with no one willing to hurl themselves in front of her.

“You’re just,” he starts, and bites his words down before they can betray him.

Her eyes narrow to slits. “Just what, Kakashi,” her voice dangerously low.

“Necessary,” he finally manages. “To me.”

She stares at him for a moment.

“Necessary,” she repeats softly.

He nods and hopes that the extent of meaning he has been trying to hide from her hasn’t been fully captured in that single word. Yet against his will, with the frantic pump of blood in his veins and the new shock of being alive when he should have been dead, he finds his head tilting down until the warm skin of his forehead, sticky with blood, is pressed against hers.

He closes his eyes, too afraid of her reaction, and simply breathes in the reality that she is solid and more or less whole in front of him. He finds that he cannot deny himself this luxury.

Her breath quivers in the small warm space between them, and a shiver runs through him. To be this close to her after being so afraid is like being run through with electricity, but infinitely less painful.

Finally her hands cup the sides of his face, her fingers pressing against his temples where he can feel more of her chakra seeping in to eradicate damage.

“You are necessary to me, too.” She pauses, hesitant. “I’ve been more afraid recently… I haven’t… Haven’t known how to risk you.”

He wants to nod but is afraid of moving when they’re so close. Everything feels like sharp edges, like he will bump into something and slice himself if he isn’t careful.

But he understands the odd phrasing of what she is trying to communicate. He understands that he wouldn’t know how to cope without his stops by the hospital, for no apparent reason, just to get his new and weaponless eye checked for the umpteenth time. Or how to return to the training field without the sharp crackle of her chakra at his side and the verbal games they play, pretending to be more in control than the other. He doesn’t know what he would do if when he returned from missions he didn’t find her waiting for him at his door, just as he found himself waiting at hers, half mad and half terrified out of his mind until the sounds of her footsteps echo at the edges of his strained senses.

To a certain degree he never understood the absurd and the impossible things ninja did for each other out of love. And he is terrified of learning more.

He manages to pull himself back from the abyss. He leans back, the sudden loss of warm breath in front of his face feels like a harsh slap.

“We both need to get back safely,” he says in a type of peace offering.

Her eyes are guarded when she looks back up at them, yet there is a layer of rawness there he desperately wants to press at. She nods and it is gone. He wants to kick himself for thoroughly destroying the moment and what it could have meant for them, but he cannot because he knows really, truly, this was necessary.

She nods. “We need to go home,” she says.

Yes, he thinks to himself. We certainly do.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, this is something I have produced after a long (several year) hiatus and I am trying very gently to ease myself back into writing. Would appreciate feedback or general encouragement if you feel so inclined!


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